FIXING ESKOM CRIME THE MAD HATTER’S WAY
The actions of law enforcement agencies and of Cele himself indicate that this political will is about the size of the fedora he wears
The Eskom graft saga continued to unfold before parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) this week, with a lacklustre performance by the country’s law enforcement agencies. As far back as 2019, Eskom leadership and government ministers highlighted sabotage and corruption as key challenges for the power utility which is implementing power cuts of between 10 and 12 hours this week to avoid total grid collapse.
Load-shedding is the No 1 threat to the economy and, ironically, to the ANC’s political fortunes come 2024 yet the police, the Hawks and their political head, Bheki Cele, adopted a nonchalant approach at the Scopa hearings. They made out that they were blissfully unaware of the extent of the rot at Eskom and pointed fingers at former CEO André de Ruyter for allegedly failing to report crimes he was aware of.
The police and the Hawks told the committee that De Ruyter had not shared with them the explosive information he revealed in an interview with eNCA in February. They acknowledged he reported acts of criminality and sabotage last year, but it was information that was “not new”.
De Ruyter himself told the committee last month that he had complied with all the requirements to report criminality by informing the national police leadership, minister of public enterprises Pravin Gordhan and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s security adviser, Sydney Mufamadi.
The identity of the two senior ANC politicians De Ruyter cited in the February interview as being involved in Eskom corruption remains a mystery. By all accounts, their names were never reported to law enforcement agencies.
It gets stranger. Hawks head Godfrey Lebeya told Scopa that his directorate only received the report on corruption that De Ruyter highlighted in the interview the day before the former CEO appeared before Scopa.
Shortly after Lebeya said this, the MPs heard that the report had in fact been received last year, in line with De Ruyter’s testimony.
The shenanigans at Eskom are as clear as mud, but MPs got to the crux of the matter when they asked Cele if there was sufficient political will to get to the bottom of the criminality.
Cele, who never wastes an opportunity to display his incompetence, assured the committee that there was “huge political will” to deal with crime and sabotage at Eskom.
The actions of law enforcement agencies and of Cele himself indicate that this political will is about the size of the fedora he dons when, instead of preventing crime in the first place, he makes after-the-fact visits to the scenes of crimes. The intrepid minister of crime scenes did make one visit to an Eskom power station, Tutuka, along with Ramaphosa and the two ministers overseeing electricity at the time, Gordhan and Gwede Mantashe, minister of mineral resources & energy.
Cele told Scopa that Eskom officials who briefed the high-level delegation blamed most of the outages on technical faults, not acts of criminality.
But the Eskom officials did tell Ramaphosa and his entourage about the rocks that are painted black and passed off as coal, damaging vital equipment. Spare parts for crucial machinery existed only on paper despite having been paid for, and tankers would arrive at Eskom premises to deliver diesel, and be paid for the fuel, but would leave with their cargoes intact.
The station manager and his school-going children had to be accompanied by security staff, Cele said.
“It was clear law enforcement had to do something but one had to put some effort into it from the side of political will and indeed somewhere in January there was a meeting,” he said.
So, at least six months after the goings-on were reported in June last year, a meeting was held so much for “huge political will”. Cele said that in a subsequent meeting, “the president was cutting everyone’s throats apparently Ramaphosa was livid that so little was being done to address the problem. Little wonder he deployed the army to protect power stations. Eskom itself uses the services of about 6,000 private security officials the country’s law enforcement agencies and the minister in charge of them are asleep at the wheel. The Scopa hearings are playing a crucial role in uncovering how urgently we need to stop the rot at Eskom but there is a long way to go to lay bare the corruption, sabotage and criminality in all their details.